When you’re listening to the radio, do you ever stop to think about how few songs are played by obese schizophrenic black musicians from the streets of Chicago?Â I know that I think about this all of the time. The airwaves are cluttered with alternative rock, rap, and R&B; meanwhile, the “obese schizophrenic” musical genre is severely underrepresented.Â That’s why everyone should start calling their local radio station and requesting songs by Wesley Willis.

Wesley Willis is 6 foot 5, weighs between 300 and 350 pounds, and likes to greet people with a headbutt.Â Shortly after he made his first album, he was diagnosed with chronic paranoid schizophrenia, and he now claims to have “schizophrenia demons” in his head that take him off of his “harmony joy rides” to put him on “torture hell rides”.

Wesley Willis,
Mozart of thetwentieth century.

Never heard of Willis before? Until recently, no one had. He lived on the streets of Chicago, homeless, selling his city landscape line drawings and playing music on his late 80’s Casio keyboard from K-Mart. After saving for a while, he pulled together the money to cut a few albums, and suddenly his musical career took off. Willis was “discovered”, and is now an artist under Dino Paredes and the major record label American Recordings. He has released at least 20 albums as a solo artist and with his punk rock band, the Wesley Willis Fiasco, and has over 400 songs in circulation.

You might think that fame and riches would have spoiled Willis, but this isn’t the case at all. The background music in nearly all of his songs is still provided by the same demos on his Casio keyboard. You may find it rather lazy of him to use the keyboard’s built-in music, but this isn’t the case either — Willis makes sure to press the “fill-in” button at regular intervals. Besides, the focus of Willis’ compositions is not on the cheesy synth music, but on the lyrics. Just so that you can get an idea of Willis’ lyrical genius, let’s take a look at the words to one of his most popular songs, “Alanis Morissette”:

You are a rockin’ maniac.
You are a singin’ hyena.
You are a rock star in Jesus’ name.
You can really rock Sadam Hussein’s ass.
You are so lovable to me in the long run.
ALANIS MORISSETTE!
ALANIS MORISSETTE!
ALANIS MORISSETTE!
ALANIS MORISSETTE!

Fabian Road Warrior,
Wesley’s latest album.

Willis’ music has to be heard to be believed. That’s why I suggest you immediately visit this page at CD-Now, where you can listen to samples from many of his best songs, including “I Whupped Batman’s Ass”, “The Chicken Cow”, “Rock and Roll McDonald’s”, and “I’m Sorry That I Got Fat”. If you’d like to hear more, you should purchase his latest album, Fabian Road Warrior — it contains “Alanis Morissette” as well as 23 other original compositions including the hit songs “Suck a Cheetah’s Dick”, “Suck a Pitbull’s Dick”, and “Suck a Donkey’s Bootyhole”.